Ex-Financial Times Journalist Tom Foremski @ the Collision of Technology and Media

06

April

2010

|

10:48 AM

America/Los_Angeles

The Next Big Thing According To John Doerr And Pals Is A Closed Thing

John Doerr and fellow Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partners have published a post titled: The Next Big Thing and also announced they raised $200m for their second iFund.

According to the KPCB VCs, there is a "brave new world" emerging and it is best typified by the iPad and its fluid, dynamic user interface.

On Saturday (April 3) the iPad arrived. We believe it will rule the world. I've touched it, held it, and caressed it. It feels gorgeous. It feels like touching the future.It is not a big iPod. But it IS a very big deaWe're going from the Old World to a brave New World.* From the Old World of the traditional, tired window interfaces... to the wonderful new world of TOUCH.

* From the Old World of Point and Click to the new SWOOSH of Fluidity. * Instead of old, artificial, indirect interfaces, the iPad is direct and NATURAL. * Instead of WYSIWyg - what you see is what you get - it is WYTIWis. What You Touch... IS what IS. * Instead of holding a MOUSE, you're holding MAGIC.

The authors compare it to the beginning of the PC industry, and to the time when they saw the first web browser.

OK, we get it, you really like the iPad.

But the world of Apple is not an open world, it is not built on the same open platform that built the PC industry, or the world of the Internet with its open standards.

The world of Apple is proprietary, it requires the Apple online store, it requires Apple hardware and software; it requires permission from Apple; it requires proprietary hardware you can only get from Apple.

That's not a world that is comparable to the PC industry or the online world of the Internet.

And it's also a litigious world. Apple is suing to protect its user interfaces and its proprietary technologies.

In the PC world, everyone cross-licensed technologies with each other because they knew that legal battles were bad for business. The PC industry tried to create as little friction as possible so that an open platform could support many companies and support continued innovation and low prices.

KPCB's iFund is focused squarely on Apple and while that's a smart move it's not the "Next Big Thing."